Hoi, I am doing some research for Ultimate Wiktionary. As Ultimate Wiktionary intends to have all words in all languages, a consequence will be that all those words that are in rare fonts will not be viewable. This is to some extend already an issue. It is quite normal when we have an article in wikipedia about a foreign place to include the way it is written in that country. This is problematic for places like Ethiopia, Georgia or Thailand to name just a few with interesting fonts.
On previous wikimeets I attended we did discuss the need for a collection of fonts that would include as many fonts as we can get for our public. It would help a lot if we could have one resource that is free for use and that does include all the needed fonts. If it requires a reasonable amount of money to buy a missing font to make it Free, I think it is worthy of consideration. I am also sure that when we acknowledge the people who make fonts available for this purpose we will be able to get many resources for free.
The issue of fonts came again to my attention because I do not have braille of signing language fonts and I really would like to be able to include the words and their representation in script in the Ultimate Wiktionary as well. Technically speaking, it is not necessary for me to have these fonts but I do consider it wrong to have content that the average user will not be able to display. Therefore my request to consider having fonts as a resource that we want to support for our users.
Thanks, GerardM
Dear Gerard,
That sounds like a good idea, but I do have a question: what do you mean by making fonts "free"?
Regards,
Zachary Harden, en:User:Zscout370
From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] Fonts Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:57:00 +0200
Hoi, I am doing some research for Ultimate Wiktionary. As Ultimate Wiktionary intends to have all words in all languages, a consequence will be that all those words that are in rare fonts will not be viewable. This is to some extend already an issue. It is quite normal when we have an article in wikipedia about a foreign place to include the way it is written in that country. This is problematic for places like Ethiopia, Georgia or Thailand to name just a few with interesting fonts.
On previous wikimeets I attended we did discuss the need for a collection of fonts that would include as many fonts as we can get for our public. It would help a lot if we could have one resource that is free for use and that does include all the needed fonts. If it requires a reasonable amount of money to buy a missing font to make it Free, I think it is worthy of consideration. I am also sure that when we acknowledge the people who make fonts available for this purpose we will be able to get many resources for free.
The issue of fonts came again to my attention because I do not have braille of signing language fonts and I really would like to be able to include the words and their representation in script in the Ultimate Wiktionary as well. Technically speaking, it is not necessary for me to have these fonts but I do consider it wrong to have content that the average user will not be able to display. Therefore my request to consider having fonts as a resource that we want to support for our users.
Zachary Harden wrote:
Dear Gerard,
That sounds like a good idea, but I do have a question: what do you mean by making fonts "free"?
Fonts are under copyright unless you know otherwise.
If we're to provide downloadable fonts to readers, they'll need to be freely licensed for distribution and use. (Note that many fonts you might download off random web sites may be restricted -- 'shareware' or non-commercial use or otherwise.)
There are many free font projects out there, though I don't know how good the coverage for some languages is.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
Zachary Harden wrote:
Dear Gerard,
That sounds like a good idea, but I do have a question: what do you mean by making fonts "free"?
Fonts are under copyright unless you know otherwise.
If we're to provide downloadable fonts to readers, they'll need to be freely licensed for distribution and use. (Note that many fonts you might download off random web sites may be restricted -- 'shareware' or non-commercial use or otherwise.)
There are many free font projects out there, though I don't know how good the coverage for some languages is.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
There is a real issue right now with Han (Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc.) fonts that support the full Unicode range...even code points to 64,000. Microsoft allowed its Unicode font to be downloaded for free---for a time, but it is now down, and illegal to copy. You can now only get it when you purchase a Chinese language expansion pack. (if you dig on the web, there are a few "illegal archives of it, but nothing official.) There are several others that are available, but almost all of them are commercial with substantial licensing fees. One of the best current fonts is at:
http://home.att.net/~jameskass/
He only asks for a $5 registration fee, and it is a very good font that includes many code points for several languages including braille and signing language fonts (as defined in the Unicode standard), but unfortunately it is not GFDL compatable in terms of common distribution, and Mr. Kass is retaining copyright on the font. I don't know of any other similar font or free download font that even approaches what this font can accomplish. IMHO this is something that needs to be started as some sort of free content project, but I would have no idea where to even begin. I thought I saw a GNU project that was working toward this end some time ago, but I can't seem to find the page.
Zachary Harden wrote:
Dear Gerard,
That sounds like a good idea, but I do have a question: what do you mean by making fonts "free"?
Regards,
Zachary Harden, en:User:Zscout370
Hoi, There are many Fonts out there already, some are Free some are shareware and some are proprietary. With Freeing a font I mean, making them open source or free software. The intention is that all our users will be allowed to use it from a license point of view.
Thanks, GerardM
From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] Fonts Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:57:00 +0200
Hoi, I am doing some research for Ultimate Wiktionary. As Ultimate Wiktionary intends to have all words in all languages, a consequence will be that all those words that are in rare fonts will not be viewable. This is to some extend already an issue. It is quite normal when we have an article in wikipedia about a foreign place to include the way it is written in that country. This is problematic for places like Ethiopia, Georgia or Thailand to name just a few with interesting fonts.
On previous wikimeets I attended we did discuss the need for a collection of fonts that would include as many fonts as we can get for our public. It would help a lot if we could have one resource that is free for use and that does include all the needed fonts. If it requires a reasonable amount of money to buy a missing font to make it Free, I think it is worthy of consideration. I am also sure that when we acknowledge the people who make fonts available for this purpose we will be able to get many resources for free.
The issue of fonts came again to my attention because I do not have braille of signing language fonts and I really would like to be able to include the words and their representation in script in the Ultimate Wiktionary as well. Technically speaking, it is not necessary for me to have these fonts but I do consider it wrong to have content that the average user will not be able to display. Therefore my request to consider having fonts as a resource that we want to support for our users.
On 7/20/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote: <snip>
On previous wikimeets I attended we did discuss the need for a collection of fonts that would include as many fonts as we can get for our public. It would help a lot if we could have one resource that is free for use and that does include all the needed fonts. If it requires a reasonable amount of money to buy a missing font to make it Free, I think it is worthy of consideration. I am also sure that when we acknowledge the people who make fonts available for this purpose we will be able to get many resources for free.
Good fonts require tons of time from professional artists. I don't think the foundation could buy them for all languages we support unless we somehow come across a few million dollars. We'd probably have better luck convincing Microsoft to open source theirs.
Dori
Le Thursday 21 July 2005 01:15, Dori a écrit :
On 7/20/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
On previous wikimeets I attended we did discuss the need for a collection of fonts that would include as many fonts as we can get for our public. It would help a lot if we could have one resource that is free for use and that does include all the needed fonts. If it requires a reasonable amount of money to buy a missing font to make it Free, I think it is worthy of consideration. I am also sure that when we acknowledge the people who make fonts available for this purpose we will be able to get many resources for free.
Good fonts require tons of time from professional artists. I don't think the foundation could buy them for all languages we support unless we somehow come across a few million dollars. We'd probably have better luck convincing Microsoft to open source theirs.
You are joking, I hope ? I doubt very much Microsoft is going to release anything as Open source any time soon. It is not in their interest.
But I am pretty sure funding could be found to buy IP rights. Think about Blender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
Dori
Regards, Yann
Yann Forget wrote:
Le Thursday 21 July 2005 01:15, Dori a écrit :
On 7/20/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
On previous wikimeets I attended we did discuss the need for a collection of fonts that would include as many fonts as we can get for our public. It would help a lot if we could have one resource that is free for use and that does include all the needed fonts. If it requires a reasonable amount of money to buy a missing font to make it Free, I think it is worthy of consideration. I am also sure that when we acknowledge the people who make fonts available for this purpose we will be able to get many resources for free.
Good fonts require tons of time from professional artists. I don't think the foundation could buy them for all languages we support unless we somehow come across a few million dollars. We'd probably have better luck convincing Microsoft to open source theirs.
You are joking, I hope ? I doubt very much Microsoft is going to release anything as Open source any time soon. It is not in their interest.
But I am pretty sure funding could be found to buy IP rights. Think about Blender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
Hoi, Actually there are quite a few applications that have been made open source by Microsoft. They do use several licenses for this and they are not all equally Free or Open. My point is more that we should not assume what a company like Microsoft is. When we want something of them and when we do not ask nicely then we are not much better than what we make Microsoft out to be.
Yes, we could buy IP rights propably for the shareware fonts ..
I have started an article on Meta on this subject: [[Font support from the WikiMedia Foundation]]. This is to prevent the idea from going away .. :)
Thanks, Gerard
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org